MMWEC awarded for perfect record

LUDLOW -- The National Safety Council (NSC) has awarded the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company (MMWEC) its "Perfect Record Award" for six years without a lost-time accident at the Stony Brook Power Plant in Ludlow.
The NCS award, announced during a recent all-employee gathering at the power plant, recognizes the MMWEC organization's longstanding commitment to safety in operating and maintaining its Stony Brook facilities, which include 527 megawatts of electric generating equipment, a natural gas pipeline, oil storage tanks, electric transmission lines and other facilities.
"The award is particularly significant due to the level of activity at the plant in recent years," MMWEC Chief Executive Officer Ronald DeCurzio, said. "It's extremely important to keep the plant in top operating condition, and there have been several major equipment upgrades where the exposure to safety issues has been high."
MMWEC completed one of the most lengthy and complex outages in the plant's history in 2008, a 65-day outage distinguished by the diversity and scope of work on major plant components and systems. A fall 2009 outage focused on installation of new control systems, switchyard work, equipment inspections and upgrades.
The NSC safety award, presented to employees by MMWEC President Peter Dion, cites MMWEC for operating the plant "437,400 employee hours without occupational injury or illness" from April 2004 to April 2010. Stony Brook remains accident-free to date. The NSC works with businesses, elected officials and the public to ensure safety and prevent injuries in the workplace, on roads, in homes and communities.
Safe operation of the Stony Brook plant earned MMWEC a Safety Award of Excellence from the American Public Power Association earlier this year.
The existing Stony Brook plant, commissioned in 1980, provides electric energy and capacity to 25 Massachusetts municipal utilities based in the communities of Ashburnham, Boylston, Danvers, Georgetown, Groton, Hingham, Holden, Holyoke, Hull, Ipswich, Littleton, Mansfield, Marblehead, Middleborough, Middleton, North Attleborough, Paxton, Peabody, Reading, Shrewsbury, Sterling, Templeton, Wakefield, West Boylston and Westfield as well as six Vermont utilities.
MMWEC is pursuing plans to build a new 280-megawatt power plant at its Stony Brook site to help meet the future needs of its Member and other municipal utilities. MMWEC is a non-profit, public corporation and political subdivision of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that provides a variety of power supply, financial, risk management and other services.